This invention relates generally to creating, delivering, reading and responding to on-screen conversations over a distributed computer network.
Online communications typically involve a person initiating a text message with one or more other person(s) on a subject of common interest by using a software application on a computer or other network-connected device. Recipients of the message are notified of the communication and can respond through a compatible software application on a computer or device connected to a common network. Whether or not an online communication has a designated subject or topic, the subject matter may change in the course of communications, and so may the participants. Changing topics and/or participants in the course of interpersonal communications is a natural and common attribute of conversation, regardless of the medium—be it in person, via voice communications or through textual, online communication applications.
Examples of existing online communications include electronic mail (email), instant messaging (IM) and short messaging services (SMS, aka ‘texting’). Currently, online communications are hindered by segregated platforms and applications for different modes of communication. For example, email is optimized for asynchronous online messaging, while instant messaging is optimized for synchronous online communications and SMS is optimized for mobile messaging. Even within the same online communications channel (e.g., email), different human interfaces and different methods of storing and transmitting data result in different views of the communications among participants in the same conversation. Indeed, the view of a given participant may change depending on which type of network-connect device and what network(s) she is using to conduct an ongoing communication. All of these factors result in discontinuous and disjointed conversations, even without changes in the participants or initial topic. In the absence of a unified online application and platform for online communications, each participant is effectively required to reconstruct a multi-channel conversation in his or her own imagination.
Furthermore, the lack of rich content integration by text-oriented online communications applications limits the ability of people to express their thoughts. If the adage that ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’ is true, then trillions of words are forgone every day by the inability of current online communication to convey images, or audio or video. Even as the World Wide Web has transformed from a text- and page-oriented medium into a highly expressive and dynamic environment—rich with images, audio and video—online communications have remained largely textual and static in nature. In the cases of email and instant messaging, rich content has to be either attached as a separate file or inserted as a hypertext link—links that are often broken in the transmission process. Where file attachments are involved, each recipient must store a separate copy of the file—sometimes multiple copies if more than one application client is used. As for SMS, it simply does not support images, audio or video, which has forced the advent of yet another segmented online communication application to accommodate rich media in the mobile environment—namely, Multimedia Messaging Service, or MMS.
While some so-called ‘social networks’ are to some limited extent more compatible with rich Web content, they are also are much more oriented to multicast or broadcast communications and not to private communications among a select group of participants.
In addition to being limited in support for rich content and media, today's online communication applications and platforms are limited in their ability to support model the natural flow of human conversation. Email, IM and SMS are appropriately described as messaging applications and platforms—indicative of their inherent design bias toward terse and task-oriented communications. This bias is evidenced by the user interface metaphor of email—an office memorandum, complete with the anachronistic term of ‘carbon copy.’ An office memo may be a good model for communications with a specific purpose (e.g., the time and location of a staff meeting), but the structure and layout of email does not lend itself to the natural flow of conversation, and the same is true of IM and SMS. For instance, email, instant messaging, and SMS applications all show messages in chronological sequence rather than by topical or logical relationship. Simple ‘threading,’ or grouping, of messages by topic is sometimes offered by email applications as a visual aid to help users to follow the flow of a conversation. But threading is, at best, a superficial solution to a fundamental deficiency in today's online communications.
Finally, online communications applications are not well integrated with the rapidly evolving category of online ‘social networks.’ For example, online communications applications generally use a separate a static database of contacts, requiring input and maintenance by each user. While there are services that synchronize contact lists among different online communications applications (and different computers and devices used to interface with these applications), these services are often costly and they still require each user to maintain her set of contacts independently. By contrast, social networks offer a much more dynamic approach to contact, or ‘friend,’ management. Each member of the social network provides and maintains his own profile (including images and contact information), which is then shared with and automatically updated for all of his friends. While some social networks have started to provide simple email-like and IM-like online communication applications for communication between select friends (rather than the more typical mode of social network communication—to all friends), these have more limited functionality than dedicated online communication applications of email and IM.